Book 350: Heart of the Hunter
What do you do when an old friend calls and asks for a favor? Especially when that favor requires a return to a lifestyle you have abandoned? That’s the point on which this story, set in South Africa after over a decade of life post-apartheid, hinges.
It’s a thriller of sorts, I guess, complete with car chases, but it’s more of an introspective exploration than anything else. Our hero is trying to live a quiet life after having cleaned up his act, but he’s dragged back into the underworld, and he is faced with a series of choices. Does he take the easy way out, or does he do things the right way, even if this way is harder? And how much is he willing to risk to keep a promise?
We meet a variety of characters over the course of the book, and the narrative style, while irritating at times, is actually pretty effective. We are constantly launched back and forth, reading supplemental information and getting new perspectives. Once you settle into it, it’s actually kind of fun.
The one thing that kind of disappoints me about this book is that the reader does not really get a taste and a feeling for what South Africa is like. There are occasional glimpses here and there, but I don’t get much of the flavor of the place. It’s kind of unfortunate, since there aren’t a lot of books set in South Africa, and it’s a place of which I have only dim and uncertain impressions.
Demographics:
Heart of the Hunter, by Deon Meyer. Published 2004, 384 pages. Fiction.
Tags: book project